EMBARGOED FOR
RELEASE: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 6:45 p.m.Eastern TimeNote to
journalists:Please report that this
research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society

A press conference on
this topic will be held at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, March 27, 2012, in the ACS
Press Center, Room 15A, in the San Diego Convention Center. Reporters can
attend in person or access live audio and video of the event and ask questions
at www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive.

A capsule for removing radioactive
contamination from milk, fruit juices, other beverages

SAN DIEGO, March 27, 2012 — Amid concerns
about possible terrorist attacks with nuclear materials, and fresh memories of environmental
contamination from the 2011 Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, scientists today described development of a capsule
that can be dropped into water, milk, fruit juices and other foods to remove
more than a dozen radioactive substances.

Scientists have
developed a capsule
that
removes radioactive decontamination from
milk and other beverages.

In a presentation at the 243rd National
Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s
largest scientific society, they said the technology could be used on a large
scale by food processors or packaged into a small capsule that consumers at the
home-kitchen level could pop into beverage containers to make them safe for
consumption.

“We repurposed and repackaged for radioactive decontamination of water and
beverages a tried-and-true process that originally was developed to mine the
oceans for uranium and remove uranium and heavy metals from heavily
contaminated water,” said Allen Apblett, Ph.D., who led the research team. “The
accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan and ongoing concerns about
possible terrorist use of nuclear materials that may contaminate food and water
led us to shift the focus of this technology.”

The technology also
can remove arsenic, lead, cadmium and other heavy metals from water and fruit
juices, Apblett said, adding that higher-than-expected levels of some of those
metals have been reported in the past in certain juices. He is with Oklahoma
State University in Stillwater.

Nanoparticles composed of metal oxides, various metals
combined with oxygen, are the key ingredients in the process. The particles, so
small that hundreds would fit on the period at the end of this sentence, react
with radioactive materials and other unwanted substances and pull them out of
solution. The particles can absorb all 15 of the so-called “actinide” chemical
elements on the periodic table of the elements, as well as non-actinide
radioactive metals (e.g., strontium), lead, arsenic and other non-radioactive
elements.

The actinides all are radioactive metals, and they include
some of the most dangerous substances associated with nuclear weapons and
commercial nuclear power plant accidents like Fukushima. Among them are plutonium, actinium, curium and uranium.

In the
simplest packaging of the technology, the metal-oxide nanoparticles would be
packed inside a capsule similar to a medicine capsule, and then stirred around
in a container of contaminated water or fruit juice. Radioactive metals would
exit the liquid and concentrate inside the capsule. The capsule would be
removed, leaving the beverage safe for consumption. In laboratory tests, it
reduced the concentrations of these metals to levels that could not be
detected, Apblett noted.

The technology is
moving toward commercialization, with the first uses probably in purifying
calcium dietary supplements to remove any traces of lead, cadmium and radiostrontium. Apblett said the capsule version could have
appeal beyond protection against terrorist attacks or nuclear accidents, among
consumers in areas with heavy metals in their water or food supplies, for
instance.

The scientists acknowledged funding from the Oklahoma
Economic Development Generating Excellence Program.

The American Chemical Society is a non-profit organization chartered by
the U.S. Congress. With more than 164,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest
scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related
research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific
conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically
receive news releases from the American Chemical Society contact newsroom@acs.org.

Nuclear accidents
such as the ones at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan and at Chernobyl along
with the legacy of past use and testing of nuclear weapons have highlighted the
need for technologies to decontaminate food and water that contain
radionuclides. The potential for future nuclear wars and even the contamination
of food and water by spent uranium penetrators further delineate the need for
technologies to protect animals and the public. We have developed technologies
based on nanoparticulate metal oxides that have very high capacity for radionuclides.
For example, they can be used to remove radiostrontium from milk. The use of suitably-derivitizednanoporoussilicas for this
purpose will also be discussed